Funded Industrial Cooperative Award in Science & Technology (iCase) Doctoral Studentship – Enhancing the Security of Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs)

Royal Holloway, University of London is delighted to announce a call for applicants for a fully funded Industrial Cooperative Awards in Science & Technology (iCase) doctoral studentship. The doctoral studentship is provided by EPSRC and the industrial partner ARM.

The studentship will focus on the forefronts of cybersecurity research in cyber security aiming to address the increasingly sophisticated microarchitectural covert and side channel attacks, for processors and Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs). With the rise of these complex vulnerabilities, there is a critical need for automatic detection and innovative mitigation strategies.

The project will be supervised by Prof Konstantinos Markantonakis, director of the Smart Card IoT Security Centre (SCC) of the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway University of London.

The student will be expected to spend full time at Royal Holloway and a period of at least 3 months with the industrial sponsor (ARM).

We encourage the widest range of potential students to study for this studentship and are committed to welcoming students from different backgrounds and non-standard pathways.

Project Summary

The successful candidate will embark on a groundbreaking research journey to develop advanced AI methodologies capable of automatically discovering potential covert channels and speculative execution vulnerabilities. By leveraging artificial intelligence, the project seeks to analyse system logs and metrics in-depth, identifying microarchitectural behaviours indicative of such attacks. The analysis will explore post-incident analysis and it will also consider performance and security considerations for real-time execution analysis. The ultimate goal will be to provide implemented countermeasures against the identified vulnerabilities.

Furthermore, at the boundaries of the proposed research effort it is expected to explore the use of compiler plugins as a novel approach to identifying and patching these vulnerabilities, offering a more secure computing environment against these pervasive threats. This PhD project, situated at the intersection of AI, cybersecurity, and software engineering, offers an excellent opportunity for a candidate passionate about making impactful advancements in securing computing infrastructures against next-generation cyber threats.

Details of Award

The iCase studentship will fund a full-time studentship for 4 years (48 months), including a 3 to 6 month placement with the industrial partner (ARM) for career enhancing research activity. Students must submit their thesis within their funded period.

The award pays the Home tuition fees (currently £4,786 for the 2025/2026 academic year).

The scholarship provides the standard UKRI rate for each academic year (currently £19,237 for a full-time student in 2024/25) plus London Weighting of £2,000.

Further details can be found on the iCase doctoral studentship website, here.

The project will have to be undertaken on a full-time basis only.

The successful candidate will be a doctoral candidate at Royal Holloway and may be required to attend optional events and courses related to information security.

How to Apply

• All interested candidates are required to apply formally through the Royal Holloway Applicant Portal: Sign In (elluciancrmrecruit.com). Please ensure that:
• In the Research Proposal document section of the application, please include “RHUL ARM studentship competition” as the name of the studentship.
• “Prof Konstantinos Markantonakis,” is stated as the academic contact/supervisor for the studentship.
• Your application is quoting reference: REF_KMiCase24
• Please note that appointment of the PhD student is subject to availability or clearance of funding from the relevant funders

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